


Down in Thebes

by gallantrejoinder



Category: Bacchae - Euripides
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:25:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallantrejoinder/pseuds/gallantrejoinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin. Modern AU of The Bacchae.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down in Thebes

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for brief use of a trans*phobic/cissexist slur.

When that Dionysus came to Thebes High School, no one ever suspected what he had up his sleeves. He caused a stir, of course. That place was all about uniform and policy, stricter guidelines than you’d ever see up at Mount Citheron High School. And a damn sight more young ladies ended up there, owing to the reputation for the school’s abstinence policies on sexual education. 

That Dionysus, with all his bright tattoos and long hair plaited with flowers, and all that bloody eye liner, did not fit the bill at all. Some of the boys like to snicker and call him ‘girly’, and mutter that it wouldn’t be long before that ‘shemale’ came to school in a skirt. For the girls, though, that boy was an awakening. They started coming to school with lipstick and mascara, foundation thicker than a mask. They wove flower crowns at lunch and wore them all day long, no matter how many detentions the teachers threatened. A couple of times they stole instruments from the music department, had themselves some singalongs after school, no matter how many detentions the teachers threatened. But it wasn’t all nature and community, though.

See, that Dionysus, he was into some hard shit. That boy had access to the hardest drugs in the business, and none to try and restrain him – dead mother, absentee father. It wasn’t long before parents began noticing their daughters coming home with glazed eyes and failed school assignments. But what could they do? That boy was a force of nature, and their daughters were just caught up in the current.

Of course, even as concerns began to air in the community about ‘that troublesome stranger’, no one ever dreamed that he had roots much closer to home. That dead mother of his, you see. Semele. She had a sister, Agave, and those two girls never liked each other. So when Semele went off and had her son with that Zeus fellow – biggest crim in the business, mind you – Agave found reason to spread the rumour that the poor woman had been sleeping with one of Zeus’s cronies, and the kid wasn’t even his. Semele didn’t have to suffer the whispering long though. Some ex of Zeus’s put out a hit on her and she was dead barely six months out of having her kid. Zeus skipped town with the kid, after. Rumours went around he spent time in Asia, as he had a lot of connections there, and there was tale of some shady deals in Greece, but who knows?

So Agave, the sister, forgot the whole business and settled around here. Married pretty well. My mum told me about the whole thing – huge business, her father, Cadmus, organised and paid for the whole thing. Very lavish. And soon enough Agave had her own kid, Pentheus. That boy was the most blokey kid you’d ever met. Obsessed with his sport and his mates, but a pretty hard worker too. That temper though! Everyone said it’d get him into strife one day. Guess they couldn’t have known how bad it’d be for the whole family. But that’s getting ahead of things.

See, when Dionysus showed up in town that spring, no one actually thought to connect him with Semele. After all, she’d been dead for years and he hadn’t been seen since he was in nappies. And he went around calling himself Bacchus, so no one would’ve recognised the name. Agave herself seemed delighted by the boy, she was just as charmed as any of the younger girls at the school.

Anyhow, Dionysus - or Bacchus - or whatever he called himself – he sure had an effect on that school. But here’s the thing, though: he chose that place for a reason. Agave was a teacher there, and her father Cadmus was on the school board, and the son, Pentheus – he was school captain! The principal, Tiresias – he was an old family friend too. So the whole bloody place was under the thumb of that family, and you can bet the town knew it. And Dionysus had plans for them. See, apparently Di’s old dad had told him what happened to his mother when he was quite young, and that boy never forgot it. He blamed Agave for the whole business, and Cadmus for not being there for his daughter. And, of course, he quickly made an enemy of Pentheus.

I mean, Cadmus always had a presence, but that boy Pentheus was something else – absolutely demanded respect, and woe to anyone who tried to stand up to that boy. So it was a shake up when this Dionysus kid showed up and started doing his own thing, but no one was more miffed than Pentheus – as school captain, he always acted like it was his personal responsibility to keep the school looking respectable. He had his cronies beat up Dionysus, but young Di just showed up to school the next day with nary a scratch on him and more ribbons in his hair than a maypole. There were some rumours, of course, that Dionysus had made the mistake of being a bit too flirty with Pentheus, and that was what started their little rivalry. Personally, I’d believe it. Dionysus wasn’t afraid of anything, let alone a macho man like Pentheus.

It all culminated the day the girls went out the woods. It was all Dionysus’s idea, of course, but people say it was Agave who led them out there. All those drugs Dionysus had been giving the girls, plus that charm he always employed, he made himself a little cult. Supposedly they called themselves Bacchants, and I reckon that’s true. Anyway, they all went out to the woods that surround this place one day at lunch time, and when the bell went they didn’t come back. Old Cadmus was panicking, but Tiresias said they would just have to find Dionysus and make him a deal. Butter him up until the girls came back and then expel him, which, considering the family’s hold on this place, would have forced him out of town.

Now, that was the plan, but that Pentheus had ideas of his own. There were rumours going ‘round the school like wildfire, you see, saying the girls were all out there having orgies and killing animals and all sorts of nonsense. Pentheus was out of his mind – his mother was out in those woods with ‘em, see. So he went looking for Dionysus on his own, and he was absolutely furious, I’m telling you.

And then, well . . . No one really knows what happened next. All we know is, somehow Pentheus found Dionysus, and something weird went down. Because the next thing we knew, Pentheus, manliest of boys, was parading down the main street in his mum’s best evening gown! Make up, wig, the whole deal – the kid was decked out fit for a ball. And leading the way was Dionysus, looking cool as a cucumber.

I mean, we had to laugh at the time, thought maybe it was young Di’s way of showing up Cadmus for threatening to kick him out ‘cos of all the drug rumours. But it didn’t stop there.

See, he must’ve given Pentheus some of that stuff he’d got all the girls high on, because Pentheus was smiling and batting his eyelashes like a girl, but more importantly, he was following Dionysus out into the woods as docile as a lamb. Poor kid. I still kind of wish one of us had had the sense to try and stop him . . . Well, it’s no use wondering now, I guess.

None of the witnesses were sober. All the girls were high out of their minds, and we all knew it, but we didn’t think they were going to get violent. Dionysus went around ramping them all up, saying they were going to go on a hunt, telling ‘em that Pentheus was a demon or some shit like that. And those girls got violent fast. And when it was all over, Agave came crowing and singing out of those woods with her son’s head held high above her, totally berserk, completely out of her mind.

Whatever was in the stuff Dionysus had been giving those girls, it must’ve triggered some kind of adrenaline rush or something, ‘cos those girls damn near tore poor Pentheus to shreds. It was a terrible thing. The second we all realised what Agave had in her hands, it all just went deathly silent, half the town turned out in the main street to watch her dancing and singing with her own son’s mangled head cradled in her arms. I still get nightmares about it sometimes, and I’m not the only one.

Well, Cadmus had gotten word of what happened, and he showed up pretty fast. Bloody awful thing to witness. He just froze up, the old man, and Agave just kept laughing. She came down pretty hard about half an hour later, Cadmus talking her down the whole time while she held onto that head. And when she realised what she’d done, god, she made the most terrible scream. Absolutely dreadful.

And that was the end of that, really. The girls came wandering out of the woods dazed and confused the next day, covered in blood. The police recovered what was left of Pentheus. They didn’t press charges against Agave or the girls, on account of the drugs. They never figured out what the girls had taken, but it must’ve been pretty hard stuff.

As for Dionysus, well, he never came back out of the woods. Must’ve skipped town to avoid the law – not that they could pin Pentheus on him, though we all knew it must’ve been his plan all along. See, it got out that Tiresias, doing some background checking on ‘Bacchus’ realised who he really was. Soon as we knew about his mum, it was obvious. That boy always intended to destroy that family. There’s some who say you can hear him even now in the woods, and if you’ve a mind to ask politely, he’ll appear to you and take you dancing. But that’s all just ghost stories.

The school didn’t close, but Cadmus retired out of grief and Agave and him moved away. Awful business, really. We never saw them again. I was in the boys’ choir at the school at the time the whole thing went down. The school was never really the same again, but god knows that family was destroyed. Absolutely gutted, I tell you.


End file.
